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Friday, 2 August 2013

Open Contracting: Rwanda’s Private Sector See Real Benefits

Disclosure and participation by
ordinary people and civil society in public contracting has for long
been questioned as to whether it is relevant and beneficial. These
questions have often arose following frustration with under performing
contract through delays, cost escalation, technical failures and blame
game between private contractors and the client (public agencies).
Whereas no consensus has been reached in this debate, private sector
experiences from Rwanda bring an important dimension in the discussion.

With probably similar fears, doubts and
curiosity as elsewhere, Rwanda’s District Local Governments of Rubavu,
Kayonza, Huye and Musanzi with the blessing of the Ministry of Local
Government allowed a contracts monitoring coalition to monitor the
implementation of contracts on infrastructure development and water and
sanitation projects. This arrangement was enabled through a memorandum
of understanding between each of the four local governments and the
national coalition.

Under the coordination of Transparency
International Rwanda and with technical assistance of a consultant, the
coalition monitored implementation of contracts. The main objective was
to find out if public contracting was being done in accordance with the
law and to establish whether contracts were delivering value for money.
The coalition from time to time provided useful feedback on how
performance of contracts could be improved.

What were the results?

All the four Local Governments reported
positive feedback on the usefulness of the work of the coalition in
helping to advance contract performance and in explaining content of
contracts to ordinary people. On their part private contractors reported
that they had experienced less issues with clients in contracts where
the coalition was monitoring as compared to those where there was no
third party monitors in the same districts.

Encouraged by this feedback the national
coalition is planning to broaden its reach to enlist involvement of
other players as well as scale up its work to more districts and
sectors. This work clearly needs the necessary support and
encouragement.

The importance of open contracting is
gaining recognition in Africa and around the world. In Uganda, 22 civil
society organisations under the Uganda Contract Monitoring Coalition (UCMC)
are promoting information disclosure and citizen participation in
contracts in health, education, agriculture, roads, energy and
environment. In West Africa a lot of work is being done in public works.
The G8 Summit recently called on governments to “publish information
on laws, budgets, spending, national statistics, elections and
government contracts in a way that is easy to read and re-use, so that
citizens can hold them to account"

Africa Freedom of Information Centre (AFIC)
welcomes Rwanda’s leadership and is very hopeful that the country will
be a reference point not only in advancing open contracting principles
but also open government and right to information in Africa.